OOn February 24, Vice reported that McDonald’s had been spying on activists and employees for years organizing labor and fighting for the $ 15 campaign. Internal McDonald’s corporate documents obtained by Vice confirmed that the company was concerned about gathering ‘strategic intelligence’ about workers involved in efforts to secure higher wages, better working conditions and a union. This includes the use of data collection software to monitor employees and their networks through social media and a “team of intelligence analysts in the Chicago and London offices”.
This comes after years of reporting on similar efforts by Amazon to prevent the association of their own employees. Positions for intelligence analysts to “monitor and report on threats to labor”; social media monitoring; interactive “heat mapping” tools to anticipate and advance strikes or union drives; Pinkerton operations; and, recently, efforts with provincial officials to change the traffic lights outside Amazon’s plant in Bessemer, Alabama, coordinated to prevent organizers from talking to workers during shift changes – all were used to secure the company’s core.
As Vice notes, oversight of labor organizers is nothing new. What is new is the use of technology to aid these efforts, which may also be in violation of federal labor laws.
The supervision and intimidation of workers is a characteristic, not a mistake, and which has come to define American capitalism at home and abroad. As Vox noted last June, “the creation of urban police forces was largely spurred by a desire to curb union activism and protest.” While police in southern cities are largely a residual outgrowth of slave patrols, elite businessmen in northern cities like Chicago have insisted on developing municipal police forces to suppress labor that requires around eight hours of work. The concept of policing as ‘public safety’ came later.
There is no evidence to suggest that the government is involved in supervising employees at Amazon or McDonald’s. But the failure of the government’s previous government to condemn these serious labor violations – or to condemn the gaping wealth gap between mega – corporations and the underpaid workers on whom they depend – means approving cases as usual is necessary in any way.
This Sunday, Biden broke this awful trend by announcing a surprisingly strong statement in support of unions. While he did not call Amazon by name, his video address was aimed at “workers in Alabama” and is the strongest pro-union statement of any president in modern American history.
“You have to remember that the National Labor Relations Act not only says that unions may exist, but that we must encourage unions,” Biden said. “There must be no intimidation, coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda. Every worker must have a free and fair choice to join a trade union. The law guarantees that choice. ”
Under an economic system that enriches CEOs by paying employees too little for the value of their time and pocketing profits, there is a direct link between the dystopian anti-labor tactics used by McDonald’s and Amazon, and the transfer of $ 1.3 tons of wealth to the country’s 664 billionaires in the course of the pandemic. Bezos’ path to becoming the first trillionaire in the world is exactly because of his successful efforts to prevent unions from taking office in his private empire.
As Marx put it: capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and the more, the more labor it sucks.
Biden now has a choice to make: Amazon or unions. He can not fight for both.
In the campaign, Biden sent conflicting messages by cultivating the image of a trade unionist and at the same time promising a room full of corporate donors that “no one’s standard of living will change, nothing will fundamentally change.”
Biden adopted a minimum wage of $ 15 as one of his few concessions on the left, in an effort to win Bernie Sanders supporters, and later changed his tone by saying he did not believe the provision in the latest Covid-19 stimulus would not last. parcel. The statement came down to a shake-up of one of a number of campaign promises that seem less likely by the day. Democrats are now dishonestly blaming a single and little-known Senate MP, although Kamala Harris can easily dominate the decision and rescue nearly a million people from poverty.
We can and should honor Biden for his recent statement on trade unions, while also realizing that words alone are not enough. Biden has the power to immediately pass a federal minimum wage of $ 15, raise corporate taxes, appeal to the National Labor Relations Board to investigate companies such as McDonald’s and Amazon that spy on their employees illegally and a travel to Bessemer to show support for the 5800 workers.
It’s a battle against David and Goliath, and the stakes are simply too high not to act. Until he proves otherwise, we must remember Biden’s message to the US Chamber of Commerce: nothing will fundamentally change.